Memristors and photonics to revolutionise computing, says HP

HP is betting on a mix of memristors and photonics to revolutionise computers.

Three quarters of HP R&D staff are said to developing a memristor and photonics based computer which will raise computing speeds and data processing capabilities dramatically.

HP has a prototype computer where the memory is made of memristors with a photonics connection to the processor which transfers data at 6TB/sec.

“This will enable us to deal with massive, massive datasets – ingest them, store them, and manipulate them, and do this at orders of magnitude less energy per bits, per compute,” says HP CTO Martin Fink.

‘The Machine’, as HP calls it, can scale to 160 peta-bytes with each individual byte capable of being access in 250ns.

Memristors will allow the 100TB memory cellphone, says HP.

Commercial introduction of The Machine will be 2020, says HP.

Unfortunately HP has previously been inaccurate with its memristor forecasts. They were supposed to hit markets in 2011.